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Food With An Attitude John
6:41-59
At their busy stock brokerage, John Hunt knows
that it is hard to find time for small talk. So he was caught off guard
when a co-worker leaned over to him and asked, “What’s up, John?”
Welcoming a brief break, John told him about his hectic weekend and the
trouble he was having with his car. The co-worker seemed a little
distracted, however. After their conversation ended, John saw him lean
over to another colleague. “Hey, Robert,” he said. “What’s the ticker
symbol for ’Upjohn’ pharmaceuticals?”
Have you ever had trouble understanding what was going on?
We have all have had times when we didn’t quite understand what was
said…right?
In the same way people were having a difficult time understanding Jesus.
As we have already discussed the miracles Jesus was doing were great. In
fact, the people were so excited about Him that it was their thought to
take Him by force and make Him the king. But Jesus began to say things
that were hard. And the excitement began to wane.
In the gospel of John, seven times we are going to hear Christ say “I I
am.” Last week we discussed that this was what God told Moses to tell
Pharaoh when he was asked whose authority he came under. I AM was a
claim to deity.
So when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” it held huge significance.
Jesus would go on to say, “I am the light of the world.” “I am the
door.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the resurrection and the life.”
“I am the way, the truth and the life.” “I am the vine.”
But today I want us to look at the first claim, “I am the bread of
life.”
As we continue our study in John 6, we will find five phases as Jesus
explains the importance of being the bread of life.
First there rose a Complaint (verses 41-42)
So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that
came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of
Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have
come down from heaven’?”
Grumbling or murmuring that confused sound running through the crowd at
what Jesus claimed about Himself.
Jesus draws criticism because He set Himself higher than the rest. He
says that He is the real thing. He is the real bread.
There is an old story of a woman who made artificial fruits so perfectly
that people could not tell them from the real fruit. But she had some
critics who would find fault with the shape of the fruit, the color, and
other things. One day as the critics stood before a table on which she
had placed several pieces of fruit, they criticized particularly one
apple. "It looked too artificial," they said. When they had finished,
the woman picked up the apple, cut it in half, and began to eat it. It
was a real apple.
Some of the people may not have liked what Jesus said, or how He said
it, but that didn’t matter. What did matter is the truth. But still
people did not believe Him.
His critics base their disagreement on their knowledge of Him. They felt
His claims were outrageous. After all, Jesus was well known to them. He
grew up in Nazareth. He was the ordinary, natural son of Joseph and
Mary.
Yet, these complainers were a bit stuck. Jesus was performing signs and
wonders. Nevertheless, they would not cross over a barrier of their own
making, and embrace Jesus.
This leads us to the response in verses 43-47.
Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come
to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up
on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be
taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes
to me not that anyone has seen the Father except him who is from God; he
has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has
eternal life.”
Jesus tells them to stop their grumbling, because they were never going
to learn the truth that way. But Jesus does point out why they are
unable to get it.
The grumblers don’t understand because they are not connected. We all
like to feel independent. We like to think that when it comes to our
relationship with God that it is all us. But it is the testimony of
Jesus that we are drawn.
The essential ingredient is always belief.
We have a tendency, in our human thinking, to make it something more.
But belief is not being baptized, it comes before.
It is not joining a church, or rededicating your life. Belief is simply
belief.
We believe Jesus for who He is and what He has done for us. And when we
do, salvation is ours. We don’t have to work at it because the work has
been finished. The bill is paid and heaven is ours.
That is how we learn to live a life of satisfaction in verses 48-52
“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness,
and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that
one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from
heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the
bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews
then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his
flesh to eat?”
The bread of Jesus is superior.
Last week, we saw that Jesus’ critics wanted him to reproduce more food
like Moses had. But Jesus points out that manna had limitations. You eat
it and you still die. Which goes to show that you really can’t prevent
death, even in today’s day and age.
You can sure take a lot of vitamins, or herbs like wild oregano, but it
makes no ultimate difference. What Jesus is offering is eternal. He is
the true Giver of life. But to be this Giver of life was truly
humiliating.
The bread Jesus gives is an act of humiliation.
Jesus is beginning to unfold a graphic description. This bread that He
is giving is found in His humanity. With a crude forcefulness, He
announces that it is His flesh!
In the casual reading of verse 52 it does not show the depth of the
argument. In reality this is an angry, church splitting, hell
condemning, not talking at Piggly Wiggly when you pass on the bread
aisle debate. We are told that they are arguing among themselves.
And this happened for the same reasons that it happens today, those who
were the grumblers had difficulty with the mechanics of this concept.
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They don’t see how it is
possible. Not only that, at first appearance, the statement seems to be
downright offensive to their sensibilities.
And Jesus knowing their heart doesn’t backed off at this point. Instead,
His statements get more deliberate, stronger and more important.
Which leads us to our last thought this morning, one of companionship in
verses 53-59
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my
blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood
abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live
because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because
of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not as the fathers
ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said
these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
I believe that Jesus purposefully said this in a way that would be
repulsive to the Jewish mind. If eating a pig was bad then this was
nauseating. It was not kosher to eat flesh and drink blood.
But I believe that Jesus was trying to get the crowd to look for
something bigger, more profound. And even today there are those of us
who miss His point.
There are those who believe that when you take communion the symbols
actually turn into the flesh and the blood of Jesus. This misses the
profound point that Jesus was making.
Some of you might know the name Paul Brand, the famous missionary
doctor. His career in medicine traces back to one dreary night at a
hospital in East London as an aide. Hospital orderlies wheeled a
beautiful young woman into his ward. She had lost much blood in an
accident. It had drained from her skin, leaving her an unearthly pale
color, and her oxygen-starved brain had shut down into an unconscious
mode.
A nurse dashed down a corridor for a blood transfusion bottle while a
doctor fumbled with the apparatus to get the transfusion going. They
could not detect even the faintest pulse on her cold, limp wrist. She
looked like a wax museum exhibit or a marble statue in a cathedral. She
did not seem to be breathing and Paul was certain she was dead. The
nurse arrived with a bottle of blood. The doctor punctured the woman’s
vein with a large needle. They set the bottle high to gain more pressure
so that the blood would empty into her body faster. The staff told Paul
to keep watch as they hurried off for more blood.
As he nervously held her wrist, suddenly he could feel the faintest
press of a pulse. The next bottle arrived and was quickly connected. A
spot of pink appeared on her cheek, and spread into a beautiful flush.
Her lips darkened pink, then red, and her eyelids fluttered lightly and
at last parted. She squinted at first, and then looked directly at Paul
and asked for some water.
You know it is a beautiful thing to receive life when you are dying. But
this is the very thing that Jesus is doing for us.
He is describing is a spiritual partaking, this is a cryptic allusion to
His upcoming death. He was going to die, so that we might live. When
Jesus asks us to eat His flesh and drink His blood, it is to recognize
all that Jesus was giving up on our behalf. That is what Communion is
all about. A time when we as a family can gather together to remember
the great sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf so that we might fully
incorporate Jesus into our life.
We must take Christ into our innermost being. We are to eat His flesh
and drink His blood so that He abides in us.
You have seen the commercials for Gatorade on TV. They ask, “Is it in
you?”
We might ask the same thing today of those that claim to follow Jesus.
Is He in you?
What we need to take away from this class …
Jesus is a reality to be known and lived.
James Boice puts it this way:
“Is he as real to you spiritually as something you can taste or handle?
Is he as much a part of you as that which you can eat? Do not think me
blasphemous when I say that he must be real and as useful to you as a
hamburger and French fries. I say this because, although he is obviously
far more real and useful than these, the unfortunate thing is that for
many people he is much less.”
Does Jesus live in you?
Remember when we looked at the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall
have no other gods before me.”
If we were to reverse that words, it would come out: “You shall have
me.” I think it is healthy for us to consider it this way, because it
points to the intimacy Jesus says we must have with Him. We must know
Him so well, it is like eating Him.
He becomes a part of us. And as a result, eternal life is ours.
Do you continue to “feed” on Jesus?
Andrew Kelley came across a health-food restaurant in Cambridge, Mass.,
with a billboard proclaiming, "Eat here and live a long life!" The
barbecue pit next door posted its response: "Eat here and die happy!"
Today I need to tell you that when it comes to Jesus, both are right.
You are going to die happy and live a long life.
So keep feeding. Be hungry for Jesus. Don’t be superficial or going
through the motions. Let’s be in our Bibles daily, receiving the
nourishment and strength that we need so that Jesus will be a reality
that is both known and lived!
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